Silence
by I Can Kill You With My Brain
Summary: After Miranda, the voices had fallen silent.


**Silence**

When Miranda was over, the voices fell silent. Not at first, but gradually, as Simon slowly began to compile the cure, mixing and matching the many medicines he had found on Ariel.

River hadn't believed the silence at first, she'd told Simon-that-wasn't-Simon-who-couldn't-be-Simon that it wasn't real, was false, no thoughts and sounds emanating from his head meant the same as no heartbeat.

It had taken her days to finally believe him, to understand that one pill a day kept the voices away. River had smiled then, had laughed and cried and hugged Simon and smiled smiled _smiled_.

It had only taken her one day, three hours, forty minutes, and twelve seconds to realize that silence was just as loud as the voices. Louder even. She'd forgotten the fact that the voices had drowned out her own mind, her own thoughts.

The voices had overwhelmed her, made her speech come out broken and jagged, made her scream and cry and run. But they were gone now and the only screams were her own and she was trapped in a place of crumbling walls and vanishing doors and needles, so many needles.

But she'd smiled for Simon, had shoved down the jagged pieces that rose up inside of her and sliced her throat so badly she was afraid that if she spoke that blood would fall out and Simon would realize that she wasn't fixed like he had thought, had wanted to believe, and he would leave Kaylee, walking away from all of the smiles and light to try and fix her.

But her mind was so loud it scared her. It screamed and cried and wailed, the noise echoing off of the empty walls and causing more cracks to form and more pieces to fall.

She missed the voices so much that it hurt, because now she couldn't fall into someone else's mind to make her forget _that place_ and _those people_. She was trapped, trapped in a perpetual hell.

River tried so hard, so that the crew wouldn't notice and tell Simon, but it was getting harder. She saw things everywhere she looked, monsters in the corner reaching out to grab her, and blue constantly flickered at the edges of her vision, making her whip around every ten seconds just to make sure no one was there.

Mal began to take her out on jobs with Zoe and Jayne. Jayne had grumbled at first, complained that River-girl was still crazy and not to be trusted, but he'd accepted her eventually, after he saw her take down thirteen men in under a minute with just her hands and feet.

If only he knew how crazy she still was, then he would be more scared of her than he was after Ariel, after the Maidenhead, even after the Reavers. But he didn't, so he wasn't. Life was a paradox that didn't have an answer.

She started to pause before disabling the security cameras with a well-placed bullet, making sure that the screen had seen her long enough to register her.

Mal almost caught her once, but he didn't ask her what was wrong. He thought there was a method to her madness. Didn't know that it was a madness to her method.

Everything was backwards, twisted. It didn't help that the blue was coming ever closer, threatening to break and submerge her completely.

She tried to tell Simon once, but the words had come out halting and broken, because she was afraid of the pieces that threatened to fall out of her mouth when she talked. She couldn't lose anymore of herself, look what had happened when the voices had left.

And the look of sadness that he had given her, it had stopped her cold and she had given him a quick smile and mumbled something about not taking her medicine.

He had smiled, a look of relief on his face, and had given her another pill to take.

Two pills were worse than one, because for a few hours River had lost even her own voice, the one that screamed and cried and pleaded forever and ever in her head.

The silence had pressed down on her, and she had sat in her room, hands scrabbling for the cotton wool that was blocking her ears and eyes and blinding her to her world. _Blindness is a liability, you can never know when someone will sneak up behind you with a knife_.

They found her eventually, when she was all by herself sitting in her room, hands on her head as she struggled to hold back the rush of memories that threatened to overwhelm her and submerge her completely under a River of her own making. _What was the use of living if even your namesake wanted to kill you? Made no sense. _

She'd looked up at them, and for a second she lost herself in the blue that filled them. It was hard and cold and evil, but it was better than her own mind.

They'd helped her up, blue hands on her white ones. She'd stared up at them, brown eyes wide, a single question falling from her lips as they pulled her along, away from Serenity and Simon.

"Will you bring the voices back?"


End file.
